Who: Sterling & Bertie What: Investigating a Corpse When: December 1888 (backdated; evening) Where: Darcy Funeral Home Rating: High - Mentions of death Status: Complete
“Hello? I beg your pardon. Mr Darcy? Or, er, may I speak to the proprietor?” Bertie shifted from foot to foot in the thin layer of snow in front of the door, which crunched underfoot with his restlessness. “I’m looking for a corpse? That is, a deceased? ...Individual?”
He could have planned that a bit better, Bertie thought. Or at all. Normally when he was allowed to go out into the field, he did so with such enthusiasm that he hardly missed a beat, or if he did he tripped right through it. This particular errand, however, had him so distracted that he’d forgotten, in the moment between knocking on the door and a pale gentleman answering it, why he’d come here in the first place.
The pale man at the door was tall and thin. He was not the proprietor nor was he the gentleman in question. Actually he was the spouse of a woman who was presently laying out for those that would come to view.
Anita, Sterling’s caretaker flitted to the door and shooed away the widower from the cold, snowy gaping chasm of weather. “Now, Mister Faust, it is too cold to linger in the doorway. Go back and be with your children.”
When the man had shuffled away Anita turned upon the gentleman at the stoop, “And who are you?” Her voice was laced with irritation. What kind of a man came to a Funeral Home asking to see a deceased? Of course there were deceased here but he seemed as if he had purpose other than paying respects.
“Come in, whoever you are. You’ll catch your death of cold!” Beckoning the young man in, Anita waited until he’d entered and then closed the door behind him to seal away the coldness.
"I'm so sorry, I don't mean to let the cold in, I know it's quite..." Bertie glanced down at the snow he was tracking in, distracted anew by trying to avoid getting in on the clean floor, and forgot to identify himself for a moment.
The annoyed expression that greeted him when he looked up hastily reminded him to do so. "Trainee inspector Bertram Eden, ma'am. I wondered if you might have a gentleman here? Recently deceased?"
That would hardly narrow it down any, but Bertie was here by an unusual calling--the ghost of the victim had asked him for help, not understanding yet that it was far too late. He'd been confused and disoriented, as was often the case with the newly-dead, which was why Bertie suspected he might have died within a day or two. Unfortunately for Bertie, the ghost either couldn't remember its name, or simply couldn't focus on answering the question.
"Taller than I am, not as tall as that...as, ah, Mr Faust," Bertie amended. "Pale hair? Educated..." He caught himself again before describing the ghost's accent--no one tending to a corpse would have any reason to know what the person had sounded like in life. "Well-kept," Bertie clarified. "Hair, nails, mustache, all trimmed."
Lest he be eyed immediately with suspicion and tossed out for his interest, Bertie added, "He's the subject of an open investigation, I'm afraid. We have reason to believe he might have met his end within the past few days."
That was tidy enough, and more or less true. He would be the subject of an investigation, as soon as Bertie had identified him.
Anita swept the door shut and buttoned it tightly to keep out the remaining snow. Her eyes went to the floor and she sighed softly, exhaustion creeping into the corners of her eyes though her face remained solid and steady. That was a perk of having a fine housekeeper, she knew how to filter through the visitors.
“Inspector Eden,” Anita began, that hint of annoyance showing itself in her tone. It was almost motherly the way she shooed him away from the parlor area. “If you cannot keep your voice down out of respect then I should ask you not to speak at all.” And then her hands opened, willing to take his coat and hat.
When that was done and things were settled Anita motioned for Bertie to follow her, pressing her single pointer finger against her lips in a gesture of silence. This was a place to respect those that had gone on, not a bar.
It didn’t take long for her to lead Bertie to the back. The area was quiet, it smelled of chemicals. Blood. Everything was pristine and orderly.
Using a voice appropriate for the back area Anita called, “Mister Darcy? You have a visitor. A Trainee Inspector Eden.” Then the woman turned and was gone as quickly as she’d come. For as many years as she’d spent tending to Sterling she tried her best to keep herself out of his work, and he never asked her unless he truly needed an extra hand.
“Inspector,” came the soft, coaxing voice of the man Bertie had been searching for. The greeting was cold and yet inviting, a tone Sterling didn’t use often. He didn’t entertain visitors often, either.
From beyond a curtain stepped the tall, thin man. He smiled and peered at Bertie through his spectacles. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
Bertie was struck by the unexpected sensation that he'd stumbled into a spider's web and been caught up in the strands before he'd quite realized it. He took a step back automatically, wondering if, in his search for a vampire's victim, he'd stumbled onto the vampire. It was difficult to tell.
He opened his mouth to answer, and closed it again, freshly chastised and not certain whether he was permitted to speak. He'd been asked a question, though, so he said - quietly - "I'm afraid I'm here on official business, looking for someone. I have a description--blond, tall, well-kept, a bit older than I am, although not past his thirties. Would you happen to know if anyone of that description has come in within the past day or two?"
Bertie cleared his throat, glanced once around the room, and asked, "I take it you're the proprietor, Mr Darcy? I'm Bertram Eden. Thank you for seeing me."
Sterling tilted his head only so slightly as if to capture and retain the interest in the conversation, to study it and the man who’d come calling. The look on Bertie’s face was a curious one. He knew he wasn’t the most prominent face in town and it wasn’t a wonder that they’d never met before that night.
At the description Sterling frowned. “You mean the man I picked up two nights ago that looks in better shape right now than he probably did in his entire life?” The lack of the early stages of decomposition had yet to set in. Where the fingernails and tips would often turn green and then black there was nothing. The deceased’s stomach did not grow with internal gas. Nothing. He looked pristine, perhaps hard and sharp enough that if you touched him you might cut yourself on his outline.
“I wish the circumstances of our meeting were different, Inspector Eden. Please, call me Sterling. Mr. Darcy was my father and he’s not been alive for many years.”
Sterling swept a hand at a small table behind where Bertie was standing. The deceased laid out upon it was covered in a lined, only the shape of the figure, the nose, and the outline of the feet could be identified without removing the cover.
Sweeping around Bertie, Sterling moved gracefully to the table. With pale, lithe fingers he drew back the sheet to expose the man beneath. A pristine specimen. “Interesting, isn’t he? And what is your business with him, exactly?” Sterling purred, glancing up at Bertie.
"Could you tell me cause of death? I understand you're not a medical examiner, but you are a professional in dealing with the deceased. I don't want to influence you unduly before hearing your opinion." Bertie dodged the question for the moment, though a first look had revealed what he'd expected to see--the body looked to be drained of blood, and the features matched the muddled ghost who'd led Bertie here.
Sterling straightened up to his full height in consideration of the question. How much detail could he trust Bertie with? They’d only just met and yet the man seemed almost afraid of being here. He’d been down that road before, most people were afraid of the local mortician. He figured that if Bertie had gone through all of the effort to get here to inquire then he could be trusted with the facts.
Turning to the deceased, Sterling gently plucked up one of the man’s pale arms and turned it to expose the wrist. “There were bite marks here,” Sterling began, studying the now perfect skin, “two of them. Punctures deep into the skin and the vein. Another set on the neck.” He placed the arm back down as it had been.
“What do you make of that?” Sterling kept his voice low. He doubted anyone was prying but this was not business he was fond of discussing. “I would imagine the death would’ve been horrible. Frightening.”
That was unfortunate, but not, again, surprising. "An animal attack?" Bertie asked innocently. "Or the corpse gnawed by rats, perhaps? Or cats, they aren't terribly choosy, it's been seen before." He winced as he said it, but cat bites were a marginally better excuse than rats, and better by far than vampires.
He paused, noting for the first time how the man was dressed, which was not at all the impression Bertie had received from the man's ghost. "Are these the clothes he arrived in? Can you tell if he'd been...re-dressed, prior to arrival? Clothes and belongings stolen, perhaps? May I ask who brought him in to you?"
“I am no animal expert,” Sterling began, “But this is no cat or rat bite. Their teeth patterns are distinct, they leave actual bites. This was something else. More like a snake, the two markings looked similar to a snake bite. Snakes, at least that I know of, have venom and venom caused swelling. Also, venom doesn’t remove the blood from one’s body.” Gilligan had gotten a very bad snake bite once in his earlier years and it was their fortune he hadn’t died from it.
“These clothes seemed more fresh,” Sterling explained. “Usually when you find someone laying in the snow you’d suspect their clothes would have some traces of dirt or muck. His looked like they’d been freshly laundered. And no one brought him here. Someone reported seeing him and I went to collect him. No family has come forward that I know of to make any attempt at identification.”
His next stop, actually, would’ve been contacting the authorities but it seemed they’d come to him instead.
"So you don't have a name, then? Nothing to identify him in his clothes? Would you mind if I looked through his belongings?" Bertie couldn't keep the disappointment from his voice, but hopefully there would be a lead to follow from the contents of the gentleman's pockets.
From what he could see - hair neatly trimmed, and nails, fashionably-shaped mustache - this was a son of the gentry, someone of Bertie's own class or higher. Bertie had done his share of slumming in brothels and gambling houses during his Cambridge days, but he couldn't be certain this young man had donned the clothes himself. It was possible his killer - or killers - had put them on his corpse to disguise his identity and delay discovery.
Clearing his throat as nonchalantly as possible, Bertie asked, "So there was significant blood loss, you say? From the...snake-bite wounds? Is it possible they were caused by needles, or other medical equipment? I understand that morticians might drain blood in such a way, if the body were to be donated to a scientific institute for teaching. Could this be a donated cadaver, gone astray in a student's prank?"
“No, no name.” What good would it do to lie to the authorities? Sterling was an honest person. His trade went hand in hand with transparency but a lot of it also had to do with scientific fact. Death had a spectrum, he’d seen a lot of things in his time.
Sterling stepped backward, a hand sweeping to the man on the table as a silent invitation for Bertie to check his pockets. He didn’t pilfer through anything, that was up to the family to do if they wanted to keep belongings.
“I would say so considering he has none left,” came the reply. “Have you had experience with needles, Inspector?” Sterling inquired softly. He turned to the left, plucked a needle and syringe like instrument from a nearby table and held it where Bertie could see it. “Even at its best the needle is thin. It’d take time to drain a body. It would also be very messy. If this gentleman had been drain of his blood in such a manner he would have needle marks in his arms. You’ll find no such wounds at his elbows or knees, I’ve checked.” He set the needle and syringe aside.
Gently Sterling swept forward and parted the man’s shirt at the collar, exposing the clavicle, “The incision for embalming would go here. As you can see the skin is intact and unblemished.”
"Ah, I see. Thank you, that's very clear." Bertie nodded in feigned understanding and moved on, hoping the mortician chose not to press the subject. He had enough evidence to file this as a suspected vampire killing, which was well and good as far as confirmations went, though he rather wished this time that he'd been mistaken.
Bertie turned his attention to the body, doing a quick but thorough inspection of all pockets, starting in the coat and working inward. A sudden breath of cold air startled him backward as his fingers touched something in the man's breast pocket, and he nearly cursed aloud in surprise.
An eerie mirror-image of the corpse on the table hung over it in the air, looking down with vacant eyes. "I don't understand," it said in a thin, lost voice. "Am I dreaming?"
Bertie cast a glance at the undertaker, longing to speak up but unable to circumspectly do so, nor to find any compelling reason to ask the man to leave the room. Indeed, it would be suspicious if he did so. This aspect of speaking with the dead had always been tricky, but until a few months past, he'd never had their wandering to contend with. Oftentimes they'd stayed right where they died, or else gone to a meaningful place for their spirit. Bertie wasn't accustomed to them popping up wherever they liked while he was working.
"No," Bertie said after a pause, trying in vain to remember what Mr Darcy had said last, in order to make it seem more of a reasonable reply. "No, I...think not."
There was no maliciousness that Bertie could sense from the ghost, but it had grown quite cold, even for a place such as this, and he worried Mr Darcy would notice. Bertie's gaze drifted sideways to the ghost again, and then he withdrew what his fingers had touched in the breast pocket--a photograph of a young woman, her hair in tight curls.
"Lizzie," the ghost said, and then repeated it, more strongly, as if calling for the woman in the picture. "Lizzie!"
"Please don't be upset," Bertie urged the ghost, and then managed to finish the reply to Mr Darcy with a vague, "I believe this might have been a murder. I don't know if you've seen such things before."
"Lizzie!" wailed the ghost, and Bertie hastily replaced the photograph, though he'd need to reclaim it later, to track down the young woman and identify the victim, who was clearly known to her.
Sterling had moved to the side to offer Bertie space to work. Observant, he watched quietly as the Inspector began to rummage through the pockets of the deceased. Any words that left Bertie, any movement, Sterling watched and listened. There was something off about Inspector Eden but not in a malicious way.
He wondered to himself if he should mention the haunting they’d had a while back, if somehow that might ease the gentleman. He said nothing, only heard the distracted responses.
When the photo in the pocket came about he watched with more interest. It went back into the breast pocket almost as quickly as it’d come.
“I’ve seen many things. Perhaps, if you’re interested, you could accompany me to the operating theater and get a better idea of how the human body works.” It wasn’t said or offered as insult, Sterling found the place to be rather interesting.
"Ah." Bertie cast another surreptitious look at the distraught spirit and wondered which might be worse--trying to soothe a ghost without giving himself away, or following an eerie undertaker into a room filled with knives and human organs. "I need to add this to the report, I'm afraid. Someone will be missing our friend here -" Bertie paused for the ghost to helpfully interject its Christian name, but it remained sadly disobliging "- and they should be notified as soon as possible."
The trouser pockets contained no better evidence--a matchstick box and a torn ticket for the theatre. Bertie took it up to examine it, and blinked in surprise at the fragment of text left behind.
acular Review o'clock show mit one
Worrying his lip between his teeth for a moment, Bertie decided to give it one last try. He shifted his weight for a moment, then addressed the corpse, rather than the ghost. "I want to help. Only I'm not sure how." Hopefully the undertaker would think Bertie was speaking to him, or musing aloud in general.
"Do I know you?" The ghost's attention seemed, at last, temporarily caught, and it drifted a little closer to Bertie around the table.
"If you should find anything further, sir," Bertie addressed Mr Darcy, keeping the ghost in his peripheral vision and speaking deliberately for its benefit, "I hope you'll call on me. Trainee Inspector Bertram Eden."
He held his breath for the ghost's response, which he hoped would be an introduction in kind, but instead the ghost seemed to fade a little, becoming lost again. "Am I dreaming?"
Well. He had tried. He would get no further here, nor could he take the photograph of the woman without seeming suspicious. Unless...
Bertie glanced back at the body on the table. "Would you mind if I took the photograph, to be returned once we've located the man's family? It seems the best lead we have."
Mr Darcy had been quite obliging so far. However, he would be well within his rights to ask to see Bertie's card, and might note that the address was not, in fact, Scotland Yard. Calling on Scotland Yard would also find Bertie absent, although one of the inspectors like DI Walker might hear his name and redirect the inquiry. It was a gamble he had to take, however. This looked to be a vampire killing, and Bertie needed to find out who had gone missing, and where, and when. Perhaps, he hoped, Miss Allen might recognize the woman in the picture.
Bertie was certainly an odd fellow but then again so was Sterling. They both had quirks that quite possibly set them apart from the string of humanity that considered themselves normal.
“Please,” Sterling breathed softly, nodding. He didn’t mind the photograph leaving if it aided the family in their knowledge about who their loved one was and what happened ultimately to him.
“And if there is anything else that I can do to assist please don't hesitate to ask.”